Porn: A Virus Emasculating Men

That’s the tip of the iceberg, honestly. It’s interesting, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to get an open and truthful discussion of these issues because they have to do with sex, and for all of our supposed enlightenment it’s still a taboo subject. Surprise! Maybe we should just crank up the knobs of social reeducation further? The reason it’s taboo is that it affects our interests, desires, and identities too closely, that it really is incompatible with civilization as we try to live it, even according to this fairly degenerate understanding of “civilization.” So even when “sex” comes into the public sphere, it comes in according to pre-digested notions of what is appropriate, some unholy melange of third-wave sex positivism and public health.

The problem is not just pornography; it’s also a pornogrified culture. The rest of pop culture, and girls themselves, are increasingly aware of themselves as competing with pornography for male attention.

The author writes, critically: “The big question is whether or not porn use is a “public health crisis.” In other words, the main problem with porn is not moral or spiritual but that it keeps men from fornicating with lots of women.”

I actually think that the moral/spiritual problem is the least of it. It’s so much worse than that. Expanding on his critique, he writes, of porn: “It has actually delivered to us a generation of men who think of women as objects to be used and abused for their sexual pleasure. It has not given us men who know what virtue and honor are. It doesn’t teach men to pursue their joy in self-sacrificially loving and being sexually faithful to one woman for life.”

That’s all true, but it’s pretty old hat. I can sort of imagine a society straggling along in a state of protracted decadence. To believe that something is immoral, you don’t have to believe that it’s functionally destructive, or biologically maladaptive. You can morally condemn a perfectly stable state of affairs. But it’s so much worse than that.

I have to admit I think that Christian conservative thinking on sex and gender relations is pretty weak at this point. It’s just too far removed from reality; it’s not remotely keeping up with actual conditions. I recently looked up some of the Christian advice on the internet for men trying and struggling to remain chaste until marriage. I mean, the advice was horrendous. If I was a man, I would spit it back out immediately.

The problem seems to be the same across the board, for conservatives and liberals alike: no one has any understanding or ideal of masculinity. No one has any conception of what masculine interests are, how they connect to responsibilities, or what the appropriate give-and-take between men and society should be. “Men” hardly exist as a category–they’re basically being written out of our conceptual vocabulary. Conservatives and liberals alike are steeped in ignorance and confusion on this subject. The consequences are vast: school shootings, terrorism, the breakdown of the family, all of these things intersect with the demise of masculinity in some way. A lot of behavior that our society currently deems “irrational” and inexplicable suddenly becomes sensible when you have some functional understanding of masculinity.

A classic example is the fact that conservatives like Burk, when they lament porn, usually do so by remarking on how it leads to the objectification of women, may contribute to sexual violence, etc. The main concern, which conservatives and liberals shared, seemed to be that men would watch porn and go out to commit sex crimes, or something.

But the actual problem is more like the opposite, and is much worse. Porn actually leads to what you could call a dissociated sexuality. The problem is that it disconnects a man from the world, by misdirecting his sexual energies. This ultimately leads to a lack of interest in the real world, an inability to be motivated by it. How many young men do you know who seem disaffected, unmotivated, apathetic, aimless, irritable? Yeah, it’s porn. In every single case. This is a subtle but incredibly consequential effect, especially across an entire society.

Does it sometimes seem to you like our civilization is drifting and rudderless? Like our focus, our energy, our sense of purpose has disappeared? This is what happens when you lose your men — rather, when your men lose their manhood. Above all, porn is emasculation.

The drive for sex, above all in men, is one of the most fundamental and powerful drives present in mankind. Most of the work of civilization consists of controlling this drive and aiming it in socially productive directions (Freud). We used to have some institutions that did that: marriage, along with the concomitant prohibition on premarital sex. (One is completely pointless without the other.) This gave society some say in where a man’s most basic desires would lead him. That is all no more.

I’m not some sort of special enthusiast of masculinity. But I feel compelled to try to understand it, because no one else seems to.

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140 Responses to Porn: A Virus Emasculating Men

“More recently, it was the nefarious influence of international Jewish conspiracies, the dilution of the national “genius” through “race-mixing,” and other such erroneous beliefs. Again: discredited. ”

The point is not that human beings are not (mostly) capable of sublimating sexual desire; the point is that sexual desire exists, sometimes in ways incompatible with prevailing social norms governing an individual’s conduct. So long as sexual desire is acted on in private, with consenting parties who are considered capable of consent, it is none of anyone else’s business. You mind your soul, and I’ll mind mine.

Jones’ conclusion is as silly and unsourced as masturbation leading to hairy palms. Maybe Christianity prefers a decent hypocrisy to a tawdry honesty, but since we have seen how that gets used to oppress women and homosexuals of either gender for having sex under whatever circumstance, I have to prefer the latter.

“The isolation of a screen, a man and his hand is in no way a substitution for the energy and emotional exchange of sex.

In consensual sex the other is considered, the concern for their pleasure, welfare and emotional wellbeing an integral facet of the act.

When you masturbate to celluloid and a female fascimile the reality of the ‘other’is non-existent.

Watching is not doing. Watching people have a conversation is not the same as conversing with them. Observing a delicious meal, does not leave you nourished. You are a voyeur. Not a participant.
”

All true. But if you are not “getting any” from your girlfriend with a constant headache, or she doesn’t do what you see on screen and that looks like fun or you are a geek and have no girlfriend and are unlikely to get one, or just feel like some relief right now . . .

An electric device designed to stimulate (hands are so 20th C), or in future a Bot, may provide something real women (or men) are not, or are not physically capable of, in the lives of atomized people who are the measure of all things for themselves.

Devices and Bots can’t say no, can’t be assaulted, can’t whine and argue, guaranteed to be ready . . . for many today acculturated to gratification not discipline, that is a positive not a negative.

Brendan: I think you’re spending too much time on MRA websites. Young women aren’t holding out for the “top guys”. Many of them just aren’t dating at all. Dating includes pressure to have sex, and they just opt out and hang out with groups of friends, both boys and girls. And I think that’s really healthy. My daughters got to know lots of young men very well without the angst of dating. Yes, young men who want a payoff for hanging out with girls may be disappointed. And boys who think they should have only the “top girls” will also be disappointed if they themselves aren’t “top guys”. That’s how it works: The most attractive, charismatic people pair off, the average pair off, the less than average pair off. It’s when the below-average gets angry that the above-average doesn’t choose them that they run into trouble.

Sure Western nations post the adoption of invasive Christian and Middle Eastern religious and alien patriarchal ideas, has a short history compared to the more naturalistic and balanced sesibilities of the Tectonic, Celtic, and Gaulic peoples.

The pendulum always swings to an opposite extreme in absence of balance. Hence The Romance of Lust by Anonymous still holds the image of being one of the most filthy deviant explorations of erotica in human history. It was written in the Victorian Era when most men slept with a mistress instead of their wives. And makes modern porn seem like the lite menu from a fast food restaurant.

Then we had the US Sexual revolution and the equally destructive Feminist movement that has done more to subvert the family unit and emasculated young males in schools via the auspices of institutionalized child abuse than it has helped women achieve the natural empowerment of divinely feminine energies.

Norse gods and goddesses often expressed a healthy balance of their masculine and feminine energies. Sometimes even taking the form of the opposite sex. Women of the Germanic and Celtic culture often owned land, led their homes and kindred, sometimes men into war.

Where there is a naturalistic balance societal level psychological projection and aberrant distortion do not find expression in having the pendulum swing to an equivalent extreme.

Then there is also the consideration the universe always gives us what we don’t want. So it’s often best to instead devote more time to where one is wanting to go instead.

I agree that the current availability and detail of porn available now is a problem. Parents really need to realize that their kids are going to see it, and they need to deal with that and talk to them about what they might see and how they should think about it. “Don’t look, and don’t masturbate” is a complete non-starter. Teenage boys have been looking at erotica and masturbating for all of history, and trying to prevent that is a non-starter. Back in the 60’s a neighbor came to my parents for advice, because my dad was in law enforcement. One of her many sons had been picked up for indecent exposure. He was the only son in this large Catholic family whose mother had never pulled a dirty magazine from between his mattresses. She was worried that this was an indicator that something was sexually “off” about this particular son, and she was right. When you start fighting normal behavior, you’ll run into trouble. But definitely, explicit internet porn can lead to problems with teenage boys. You have to address that, and understand there are many variations of porn, some much more harmful than others, and some pretty much harmless. I don’t think there’s a man in my generation who didn’t take advantage of someone’s pile of Playboy magazines, and somehow they managed to have healthy relationships anyway.

I’d have to second all those recommendations that people see the movie “Don Jon,” even though as one commenter noted, socons won’t agree with everything in it; it gets to the heart of the matter. Not everyone even in Hollywood thinks porn’s a totally harmless habit or victimless pursuit.

On the question of whether or not sexual mores have ever been much better or stricter, at least among men, I’d have to agree with those who presume more widespread innocence, especially among the urban working class and their agrarian equivalents, as well as Joan’s shrewd observation that it’s too often the experiences of the elite that get passed on via the written word to later generations. Whenever we imagine any given era in times past, it’s always wise to consider the source.
I’d just add that the same holds true for the present, when reality and what elite commentaries say about it too often get misconstrued.

Porn is bad, but to believe it’s going to have the widespread and devastating effects on humankind’s future as some are predicting seems a bit of a leap, to say the least.

Completely off topic: I just reread my last comment and cringed. When you start hearing Sarah Palin’s voice, and you’re reading a sentence you wrote, it’s time to re-examine your syntax, if not your entire life and reason for being. Sorry. I standby the ideas, but I’d swear Sarah had a hand in that second paragraph. Sigh.

~~~This genie, unfortunately, never goes back in the bottle. This is the price of “freedom” as we now define it; you can never ban porn. You can only have faith in your fellow humans to “use” it wisely, or to turn away from it. Do you have that faith that your fellow man will show restraint in an era of no restraints? I sure don’t.~~~

Therein lies the great problem with the liberal understanding of freedom. As Burke said, for society to exist human passions must be restrained. This restraint will exist either internally or externally, but exist it will. If we don’t exercise it ourselves, it will be exercised over us. Liberalism thus ends up undercutting its own commitment to freedom, and becomes instead the “freedom” for the enlightened to rule over everyone else.

I think in our day and age this will tend over time to a combination of personal moral anarchy combined with an ever-increasing surveillance. In effect, you’ll be able to do whatever you want in terms of “private morality,” but everywhere else you’ll be watched.

Thank you, that’s exactly the bottom line for some of my previous comments on this thread.

I do believe, though, that we can piece together useful indirect information by examining the literature and other forms of public discourse of a given period. I am quite convinced that there must have been much more extra-marital sex among the upper classes, say, in France in 1760 than in Piedmont in 1820.

Ah. There are indeed many families where crying – tout court – was shameful for a boy. No exceptions. It’s a crappy value and it’s better to shame that value than the crying. To be able not to be controlled by your emotions is a *very* different thing from not permitting yourself to have them and express them. That’s the greater danger.

And while you seem to think this is a value of Anglo-Saxon culture, in point of fact English culture has been quite labile, historically, on the stoicism scale for men. It’s not at all what some seem to imagine it was.

Btw, the Anglo-Saxons had *nothing* on certain indigenous American peoples when it came to stoicism. Champlain observed the rituals of sacrificing of defeated warriors who were expected to remain impassive as they were flayed alive.

Me: Even when you bring religion into it, authority can still degenerate into power.

Carlo: And the Chevalier De La Palice is still dead.

And so is Generalissimo Franco (SNL fans of yore will get it). My point was the socon narrative that Religion Will Fix It doesn’t work. Observation of actual reality seems to show that authority devolves into power about as frequently in religious societies as in secular ones–which was my basic point.

“I don’t think there’s a man in my generation who didn’t take advantage of someone’s pile of Playboy magazines, and somehow they managed to have healthy relationships anyway.”

Probably true, but completely beside the point. Our generation had magazines – a seedy strip club or peep show if you were in a metropolitan area where you didn’t dare be seen – and that’s it. An image – your brain had to supply the rest.

These days there is practically no limit to the world of “virtual sex”, from the telephone, internet, movies of all sorts, and so forth. A person can totally immerse themselves in that media without ever having to engage his (most likely “his”) brain.

In the same way younger men like these virtual reality worlds and games online, where they can be someone else, they dip into pornworld. And they start believing that their own sexual relationships should look like the encounters in porn, and of course they don’t. Which do you suppose they end up preferring? The scenario that meets up with their fantasy, or the real one, with all of its inconvenient human intimacy?

When I was a teenager many moons ago, my friends and I used to sneak into local trucking yards to raid the cabs of parked gravel trains for the stash of Hustler/Playboy/Penthouse mags that would reliably be found under the seats 9 times out of 10. I plan to be very frank and upfront with my son in regard to the “porn talk” in a few years, but to the extent that he almost certainly will not be committing a felony B&E when he wants to look at pictures of people having sex, that’s a plus in my book.

“More recently, it was the nefarious influence of international Jewish conspiracies, the dilution of the national “genius” through “race-mixing,” and other such erroneous beliefs. Again: discredited. ”

See, now you are just promoting THE GREAT NARRATIVE!

Yes, he is.

International Jewish conspiracy theories were a by-product of a nationalism originating with the French Revolution.

Modern racism/classism has been greatly supported by “enlightened” extensions of Darwinism to social sciences, which took place almost immediately after the publishing of Darwin works.

Those weren’t progresses, were regressions caused by “progressive” ideas.

“do you think extra marital sex (either adultery or fornication) is more prevalent in 2015 or less prevalent in 2015 than it was in 1950? 1850?”

Hard to study, even today I suspect that folks would be inclined to give inaccurate information about their own experiences. And the study of sexual behavior is a relatively new field.

There is some very interesting anecdotal information available. Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies (1757-1795) lists around 150 prostitutes a year just in the Covent Garden district and it was probably far from a complete list. Likewise, the Gentleman’s Directory (1870) listed about 150 brothels in NYC, and was also probably far from a complete list. Information about the behavior of private individuals is probably harder to come by, although occasionally letters surface that have not been destroyed that tell surprisingly stories about what happened behind closed doors in the past. And, if “Courtship and Sexual Freedom in Eighteenth Century America” is to be believed, marriage and birth records hint that, in the late 1700s, 30-40% of women married in New England were pregnant before marriage (based on the dates of marriage and first birth being less than 9 months apart). I imagine the main difference would be that the culture of the time strongly pressured the couple to marry in the event of pregnancy

My guess is that, if the data were available, we would find that, smoothing out the spikes (1861-1865, 1914-1918, 1939-1945), we would be surprised at how steady the rate is, at least for men. Society has always punished women much more harshly for sexual license than men. I imagine that it might trend upward slowly, especially beginning with the industrial revolution.

The one area where I bet you would find a significant increase today over past eras is serial monogamy, where, while the person may only have one partner at a time, the number of partners over a person’s lifetime is higher today than in the past.

Jones is absolutely right. This problem is related to a loss of any idea of what a healthy man behaves like, which has affected all levels of our society. In many ways it is an enabler and drug which encourages and rewards worthlessness, with less obvious bad consequences than the actual illegal drug trade.

Men are actually pretty fragile, compared to women. Women typically take care of their responsibilities regardless of the circumstances while in a state of nature situation like our own society it appears that that men will largely avoid them.

Loudon Is a Fool: So by the time a boy is a teen he should have a decent feel for the rules (cry when your dog dies, shed a single tear at your daughter’s wedding, shrug when the cat dies).

Somehow, I don’t think that being a dog person is an essential part of true masculinity. I prefer cats myself.

In all this discussion of how women prefer “top men,” I’m surprised that no one has pointed out how porn creates unrealistic expectations that even the biggest dork is entitled to a super-hot chick. Any young man who is whining that he can’t get a girlfriend is undoubtedly ignoring any number of nice young women who might not be supermodels, but have a lot to offer as human beings.

This is what I mean about porn being “aspirational”; young men naturally desire to be with young women, for some that doesn’t happen for the reasons you cite – social hierarchy, a geekiness which leads to shyness, etc. etc. Couple that with porn consumption and they see something desperately alluring that they can’t have.

You are missing some subtleties when calling porn aspirational. Obviously desiring a woman with freakishly inflated breasts is a bit unrealistic, but that is not all that is going on.

Fundamentally porn, or really hardcore porn, is about desiring a woman, and then watching her be dominated by another man. That is why the results about impotence do not surprise me in the least. Porn is literally rewarding yourself for one of the most emasculating experiences possible. I have little doubt this is the source of the dissociated sexuality Jones mentions.

It is also why I am sometimes really disappointed when conservatives predicted porn would turn people into sexual monsters. That was just using a crude imitative model of human behavior without reckoning with the experience itself. What porn really yields is the gradual emotional emasculation of the watcher. And considering how widespread porn use has become, it is a serious cause of concern.

That’s interesting, because it isn’t what I am seeing with my son, who is currently 16. He’s not a “have-not”, but he’s a football player and one of the fairly popular boys, and he’s had a couple of girlfriends, rather than hanging out with mixed groups. He’s met them in school activities, class, and so on, and actually went on dates when they were involved, rather than hanging out in mixed groups. This is in marked contrast to most of his male friends, who aren’t really doing particularly well with girls at all, unfortunately. Needless to say, my son isn’t a part of the porn/video-game escapism phenomenon going on to any significant degree (i.e., to the point where he prefers sitting at home to going out), but that’s because he’s had the success with girls that he’s had … and they have been the ones generally approaching him, and not vice versa. He doesn’t need to approach them, apparently.

This is at a public HS in the suburbs of DC. I suppose it may be different in different parts of the country.

In terms of long-term satisfaction with ONE intimate partner in a monogamous relationship, CHOICE is the enemy.

The happiest marital couples are the one’s that remain chaste until marriage.

Further, I think unrealistic, surgically-enhanced women engaging in acts of unrestrained sexual depravity problem doesn’t help men stay down on the monogamy farm, especially when exposed to this stuff early in life.

I think most people aspire to a happy, long-term monogamous relationship, yet their behaviors and our social norms do everything to sabotage that possibility.

Here is an article from the Economist on Chastity and Marital Satisfaction:

Re: Women of the Germanic and Celtic culture often owned land, led their homes and kindred, sometimes men into war.

In medieval Christendom there were certainly women who owned land and sometimes (albeit rarely) commanded whole nations. In the 9th century Danielys of Byzantium, who gave Basil the Macedonian his start on the way to the purple, was the wealthiest non-royal landowner in the Byzantine Empire– a lady to whom emperors listened. In the late 1400s Margaret Beaufort, even before her male Beaufort kin was killed off in the War of the Roses, was one of England’s wealthiest nobles. Isabella of Castile commanded the siege of Grenada and Mary de Guise held Scotland against Protestant rebels for her daughter then in France, Mary Queen of Scots. Germaine de Stael inherited the Necker fortune and her feckless husband was excluded from any claim on the property so that it took a direct order from Napoleon to compel the lady to support him in his final months. On a less exalted level, widows often inherited their husband’s businesses and ran them, having been intimately involved on them from the start. For sure there was no little inequality and injustice toward women in European societies, but the blanket statements made about women’s rights, especially in economic matters, need to be regarded with some skepticism.

I’m a little late to the party here, but this post has me thinking about some pop culture I’ve been enjoying over the last year – Outlander, both the novels by Diana Gabaldon and the TV series on Starz (the second season premieres this Saturday). I think the reason these books and the show have such a devoted following is that the male lead, Jamie Fraser, is the masculine ideal for our modern age, despite living in 18th century Scotland. He has all the traditional hallmarks of masculinity – tall, strong, handsome, has a strong protective instinct, a trained soldier, well-educated, religious, multilingual, and worldly. He is the laird over a large tract of land in the Scottish Highlands and thus a landlord to many tenant farmers. He knows how to live off the land because of his farming and military background. He is also very respectful of women and totally in love and devoted to his wife, who is also his intellectual equal, a fact that does not threaten him in the slightest. In fact, he is very proud of his wife’s competence, intellect and skill. He is also willing to show his emotional vulnerability to those he cares about. Outlander tends to be marketed to women, but apparently, the TV show is very popular with men too. I imagine Jamie is a big part of that. I know many men these days are having trouble figuring out what their place is in this world of changing gender roles and norms. Jamie is a great example for them to follow. (P.S. The show is also really popular because of its very racy sex scenes, but unlike gratuitous shows like Game of Thrones, they are mainly centered on two people who are married and madly in love with each other.)

actually, I have been thinking hard for a few minutes about what “secular societies” affirm any notion of authority, and I have come up empty handed. As Del Noce pointed out, the very definition of a modern secular society is that authority and power COINCIDE. At the end of the day, the notion of authority in intrinsically religious, if you think about it carefully enough.

Yes, the Church was a great bulwark against superstition, except when it wasn’t. See Pope Innocent VIII on how people in the late 15th century had “abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offences, have slain infants yet in the mother’s womb, as also the offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burden, herd-beasts, as well as animals of other kinds,” etc. etc.

Fortunately, the Inquisition was able to contain the incubi and succubi and put a stop to all these “filthy abominations.”

But look, I wasn’t saying that the Big Answers that prove wrong always come from religion. There have been plenty of erroneous secular monocausal explanations too, as you point out. I was criticizing the tendency of true believers of all kinds to project their favorite theories, Rorschach-style, onto whatever social problems we’re talking about at a given moment. My point was that doing that doesn’t get us anywhere; it just confirms everyone in what they already think.

Re: I am quite convinced that there must have been much more extra-marital sex among the upper classes, say, in France in 1760 than in Piedmont in 1820.

For the record, since I kicked off this debate, my point was about premarital sex (by men). Adultery would always have been much rarer.
One way to estimate just how much morally illicit sex was going on is to look at the number of prostitutes in an area (and we actually do have some stats on this as prostitution was a legal business). The ladies of the evening must have been making enough money to support themselves. I do not have any exact stats to hand, but where such analyses have been done the result has been that they had no shortage of customers. Some of them would have men in unhappy marriages, and some would have travelers far from home. But my guess is that the bulk were unmarried men who had no recourse to other women given that “good girls” were usually strictly chaperoned. It wasn’t unknown for families to have a teenage son taken to a “respectable” brothel for induction into the ars amoris.

I get your point about simplistic explanations, and I may agree upon it, especially when discussing contemporary events.
For past events, however, simple (not simplistic) explanations can be argued for without falling into such kind of presbyopia.

But, back to witches now: don’t you find Innocent VIII statement indiction enough of superstition, and of its horrible consequences?
The Inquisition, of course, prosecuted witchcraft, but only because of its satanism. But papal bulls and inquisition records throughout the centuries almost consistenly show skepticism about whitchcraft.
If you have a look at inquisition records, you will find that alleged witches were more often than not released, and that inquisitors regularly lamented the rampant superstition among the plebs.

On the other hand, in Protestant lands, where the judgement coming from a well-reasoned and ancient doctrinal body had been forsaken together with the Church, the hunting and killing of alleged witches was massive, a real psychosis, a Salem at the hundredth.

One way to estimate just how much morally illicit sex was going on is to look at the number of prostitutes in an area (and we actually do have some stats on this as prostitution was a legal business).

I have made a quick research and gathered a few stats above about prostitution in Italy in 1958 – the year brothels were made illegal.
There were 560 brothels and 2700 prostitutes, serving a male adult population (18 and above), at the time, of about 20 million. The average number of individual services (“tickets”) was about 30 per girl per day. This doesn’t mean, obviously, that the number of customers was 30 per day.Since “a ticket” lasted about ten minutes, many customers bought more than a ticket at a time.
If one assume, on average, one visit per month, 1.5 tickets per visit and 25 working days per month, one gets a number of customers of about 1.35 million (before, in my answer to Andrew S., I said 2.5 million but it was due to a miscalculation), which amounts to less than 7% of the male population.

Protestants may well have been worse when it came to witchcraft. Also, I agree that on balance, over the very long span of Western history, the Church was ultimately a force for enlightenment (small “e”), not superstition or obscurantism. The Scientific Revolution would not have been possible without the universities and the intellectual culture that developed in Catholic Europe.

But now, what we need is careful empirical investigation, not a reflexive blaming of social problems on porn, or gays, or sexual repression, or neoliberalism, or “modernity,” or any other such simple answer — unless that’s where the evidence actually leads.

I was not talking about Italy (about which country I know few small details, only the general history), nor about anything as recent as 1958. I was referring to the vast sweep of the history of Christendom (hence my reference to the sexual use of slaves), and my point really does and: There has never been an Age of Chastity, when fornication (note: not adultery!) was not comm,on practiced by unmarried young men.
One of the less admirable (or at least less credible) conservative tendencies is the desire to locate the New Jerusalem in some past era and imagine we have degenerated therefrom. That’s not how reality works: humans have always been sinful, mean, spiteful, prurient, dishonest, violent, greedy etc. We are saved in spite of our sins and not because of our virtues.